


I love you (Ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?)

by craploadsofawesome



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Eventual Happy Ending, Exes, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Found Family Feels, Mutual Pining, also no one dies!, dani and jamie as exes who can't get their shit together, exes au, inherent stupidity, owen sharma as best boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27175507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craploadsofawesome/pseuds/craploadsofawesome
Summary: Dani didn’t walk into her life. She didn’t come in and carve out a space for herself. She didn’t need to. She waltzed over and fit, seamlessly. By the time Jamie opened the door, Dani was already on the other end, making Jamie’s songs, her stories, her life, her own. All of Jamie was already hers, by the time they found each other in the kitchen, behind the statue, in the woods. All of Jamie’s places, it seemed, already carried the imprints of Dani’s footsteps.Still, it took her about a month after the breakup to press a fist to her chest, and feel the hollow space there, the utter lack of Dani’s name being repeated there every second.How was anyone supposed to fall out of love with their whole heart?OrFlora goes missing, there's a proposal, and two awkward ex-girlfriends discover they're still stupidly, disgustingly in love with each other.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie, Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma
Comments: 34
Kudos: 363





	I love you (Ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?)

On a Saturday morning like any other, Rebecca Jessel runs all the way into the kitchen, announces that Flora is missing to a stunned audience of Owen, Hannah and Miles, and promptly collapses into a chair in a fit of hysteria. 

Now, one might argue that it wasn’t in fact, a Saturday morning like any other, because one, Rebecca Jessel never collapses into chairs in fits of hysteria. An extremely capable governess, she was more prone to very private, very quiet anxiety attacks where she would huddle in her room, count the number of bricks on the wall, and re-emerge in a semblance of normality. She definitely did not collapse onto furniture like a heathen. She sat on them. Landed gracefully on them. Settled in a dignified manner, with her collar intact, and her skirt arranged neatly over the plush surface. Why she was currently fanning herself with a butter knife, and had Owen pressing a glass of iced tea to her forehead was probably related to the second reason it wasn’t exactly an ordinary morning because— 

“Dear Jesus, Lord Wingrave’s supposed to be arriving here in three hours!” 

Thankfully, Owen and Hannah aren’t the panicky sort. That said, Owen does shovel a huge spoonful of batter into his mouth to soothe his nerves, while Hannah immediately looks in Miles’ direction. 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he groans. “Why is it that every time something goes wrong in this house, it’s always my fault?” 

Nobody says what they really want to say, which are all variations of _Because you’re a sulky fifteen-year-old with a proclivity_ _towards destructive activities that, more often than not, involve the other members of this house as collateral damage,_ but now all of them are staring at him. 

“I didn’t do anything.” 

The staring continues. 

“I didn’t — ugh, okay, fine. I might have shouted at her to leave me alone about an hour ago. But that’s it, okay? How was I supposed to know she would, you know, actually do that?” 

Hannah sighs. 

“Okay, my love,” Owen walks up to her and easily massages her shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s alright.” 

“It’s not alright!” Rebecca says, waving around the butterknife like a demented Wild West gunslinger. “Three hours! He’s going to be here in three hours!” 

“Okay, calm down!” he replies, none of them sounding very calm at the moment. “What we need right now is a plan.” 

“What we need is for Flora to radiate bright red light from her head so we can locate her. Or a miracle.” 

It would not be a stretch to say that three people have the exact same idea at the same, find a rebuttal for it, and then justify it in their heads, but at the end of the moment, Rebecca’s still looking frantically around at them, wondering why they suddenly seem acutely constipated. 

“Rebecca, my dear,” Miles starts, and even in the middle of her panic she finds time to roll her eyes. They should not have let him watch those stupid high-brow movies a week ago. Ever since he watched Gone with the wind, he’s been walking around with a hat on and calling them stupid things like darling, my good sir, and sweetheart. 

“Have we ever told you about our ex-governess Dani Clayton?” 

***** 

How long, exactly, does it take one to say the words: Hey Dani, remember when we panic-called you over here to search for a little girl? Yeah, we should also inform you that your ex-girlfriend, who you dumped unceremoniously over the phone and who now hates your guts, has no clue you’re on your way? 

Ten more seconds? Fifteen more seconds? 

It was apparently more time than Hannah or Owen could’ve spared, judging by the flowerpot that lies in shattered pieces around Jamie’s feet. 

Dani may have imagined this moment quite a few times. Okay, alright, she may have imagined this every minute of every day. Meeting Jamie for the first time in seven months wasn’t supposed to go like this. In her head, which is more times than she cares to admit, she’s always on her knees in front of Jamie, a moonflower in her hand, begging for forgiveness. Or on her doorstep, singing whatever romantic song is in season off-key to make sure Jamie knows that her heart and her soul will always belong to her. 

(She has, in fact imagined it all a bunch of times. Every scenario starts with _I’m sorry_ . Ends with _I love you_. Usually involves a slap somewhere in the middle) 

Not this, however. Jamie takes one look at her, backs slowly away from the pot and goes to stand in the corner of the kitchen, arms crossed. 

Dani looks at Owen, and telepathically screams. He doesn’t look like he can hear her. 

***** 

Owen would be worried about added tension, except Dani and Rebecca seem to be taking to each other pretty well. 

They’re a pretty motley set of knights at the round table, all in all, he thinks. Miles, lounging on his chair with his feet up on the table, taking full advantage of the fact that Hannah is too worried to reprimand him. Rebecca anxiously recounting Flora’s general activities to Dani who seems to be listening with the benevolent air of someone who knows better, but is nice enough to entertain her companion. Hannah is engaged in some form of silent communication with Jamie, who is doing her very best to avoid looking at Dani. 

(And failing at it, miserably) 

It used to be a running joke a year back, one that Hannah and he traded when they couldn’t find either of them in the house. _Staring into each other’s eyes_ _somewhere_ , probably, Hannah would say. Jamie and Dani, it seemed to all of them, had spent so much time looking for each other that back whenever they could, they would spend all their time looking at each other to make up for it. 

The movies and the songs only talk about new love. Nobody knows what to say about two people brimming over with so many unresolved feelings that it’s easier for them to just stay quiet instead. 

Well, not if he can help it. 

“Okay, troops,” he slams a hand down onto the table. “This is what we know so far. Our darling girl, Flora is missing.” 

“There’s a bunch of places she could be, okay?” Dani supplies, hands hovering anxiously. “Just off the top of my head, has anyone checked near the lake? Or the—” 

“You couldn’t have told us this over the phone?” Jamie cuts in, arms still crossed, eyes staring a hole into the wall in front of her. “Isn’t that sort of your thing? Telling people things over the phone?” 

Dani flinches. 

“Jamie.” 

“What?” Jamie tells Hannah. “Valid question.” 

“Not to detract from what clearly seems to be the most important issue right now,” Miles says, every word reeking of sarcasm, “but may I point out that my uncle is due to arrive in two hours? And will, probably, definitely raise hell unless one of us can cosplay as a 10-year-old girl convincingly?” 

Everyone stares at him again. 

“Team!” Owen barks, after the uncomfortably long pause. “Stop bickering among yourselves and listen.” 

“Who died and made you King?” Jamie sticks her tongue out at him and is subsequently the recipient of one of Hannah’s most devastating, patented disappointed looks. “Okay, fine, your Majesty. Continue” 

Hannah stands up, finally, and he sits down, relieved. Owen is not comfortable raising his voice at people. 

(Damn it, now he really needs iced tea to calm down) 

“Okay listen up, folks,” Hannah announces. “This is what we’re going to do. Split up into teams of two and divide areas. So there’s the house, then the grounds, and finally a team up to the village to keep track of where Lord Wingrave is. And also to make sure she isn’t somehow on her way there, because the girl is getting extremely adept at catching buses to the town square.” 

Everyone shudders at the thought, and Owen sees Miles shift in his seat, looking genuinely worried for the first time. 

“I’ll go with Owen to the grounds,” Rebecca says. 

“Wonderful!” Hannah ruffles Miles’ hair. “I think Miles and I can cover the house. And that just leaves—” 

This time Owen is listening to what both Jamie and Dani seem to be broadcasting in the form of loud, loud mental screams: that there is no way they are doing this. No way they’re going to spend the next two hours in each other’s company. Absolutely no way that that is a thing that is or would ever be happening. 

***** 

Five minutes later, Dani sits in the passenger seat, stares up ahead at the road and not at her visibly angry companion, and tries, very hard, not to think of a similar moment in time, a couple of months ago. 

(" _You’ve_ _gotta_ _stop doing that,” Jamie warns her._

_“Stop doing what?” she asks innocently, eyes on her girlfriend and hand gently tracing shapes over the crook of_ _Jamie’s_ _elbow_ _. “I’m not doing anything.”_

_“You’re,” Jamie bites at her lip, stifles a smile. “You’re staring at me. And — and touching me_ _.”_

_I have to, Dani thinks, helplessly, overcome with_ _fierce_ _adoration_ _. She hadn’t realized how strong this need would be, the need to almost constantly keep touching_ _Jamie_ _, to_ _have her hands brushing at her hair, tracing her perfect, perfect features. This is Jamie. Jamie is a gi_ _ft from the Gods. And here she sits, next to her, all hers. Hers to touch, hers to kiss. Hers to love._

_For Dani, who has never known love like this, love that is_ _young, that is_ _struggling to walk but_ _already has such a tight grip on her heart, it seems almost impossible that she_ _waste_ _any time not_ _looking at_ _,_ _and_ _not touching Jamie_ _._

_She leans down and kisses her arm, sees Jamie jerk and the goosebumps on her skin stand to attention._

_“Dani_ _...._ _” she warns, again, but it’s obvious how wide she’s smiling. Her eyes have pressed in_ _to adorable creases, lips curled up wide, and all Dan_ _i can do is watch on, uselessly as love grabs onto something inside her and just squeezes._

_“You’re so beautiful,” she says._

_“I’m — I’m_ _really_ _not.”_

_“You are,” she nods earnestly, even though Jamie is completely red and very deliberately not looking in her direction. “You’re so, so, so pretty, Jamie.”_

_Jamie calls her an idiot, and Dani falls and falls and falls_.) 

There’s about five inches of leather seat, and seven months of pain lying between her and Jamie now, and Dani aches and aches and aches. 

***** 

Okay, let’s think of it this way. A girl comes into your life, switches it up, turns it around to an extent where you wake up in the morning and the birds are singing, random bystanders are dancing, the world is a cornucopia of joy or whatever. Makes you feel so much that every time you look at her, you have to press your hand to your chest in an attempt to calm the stupid idiot heart inside of it, down. She makes you the happiest woman on the planet for a couple of months, right up until the day she tells you she’s quitting her job for a teaching job at the village, and oh, by the way, she can’t do this anymore. Be with you and love you and all that jazz. And then she disappears. Only for her to reappear seven months later, with the stars in her eyes and raw hope smearing every word she says to you. 

What do you do? Go. 

What Jamie would never admit to anyone is this: seeing Dani again is an exercise in restraint. There’s a part of her that wants to grab her by the shoulders, shake her and ask her why she left all those months ago, and another stronger part of her that just wants to hold her and ask forget unanswered questions and potential risky answers. A part of her that wants to avoid looking at her (stupid, beautiful) face and another that is so starved for the sight that it never wants Jamie to take her eyes off of Dani, for fear that she may disappear again. 

Ask Dani to go away. Ask her to stay forever. 

So she does neither. Answers Dani with snippy retorts, whenever she tries to say something conversational. It’s a terrible thing, the way something inside of her feels satisfaction every time Dani flinches. The angry, wounded monster inside her thinks _Oh, do you know what rejection feels like now?_ every time there’s an awkward silence, and she hates it almost as much as she hates herself most days. 

Someone’s playing music at the bus stop. Jamie can hear faint strings of a violin, interspersed with the voices of people passing them by. The sun is a loud lamp hanging right above her head, there’s sweat gathering at her temples, and honestly, who was letting all these people walk around talking right in her ear? She takes a couple of deep breaths to calm herself down. 

Of course, that is the moment the music registers, and she stops, with Dani crashing right into her. 

( _It takes her an embarrassing time_ _to recognize the song. It’s embarrassing because she’s listened to it over the radio so many times at night, always imagining Dani’s face next to hers. The pianist is a young_ _boy, perched on a chair uncomfortably, playing his heart out, and Jamie stops the minute it comes to her_ _._

_“Oh!” she says, and Dani who was doing an admirable job of walking under her arm_ _previously stumbles along with her. The next_ _instant is a bit of a mess, with Jamie trying to keep them upright and_ _Dani giggling the entire time. She ends up standing behind Dani, her arms wrapped around her_ _constantly moving_ _girlfrien_ _d_ _._

_“_ _Stay still, babe.”_

_Dani goes red, and Jamie kisses her cheek, feels Dani’s skin heat up underneath her lips._ _God, she loves this girl so._

_“What is he playing?”_

_“You can’t tell?” Jamie asks her back._

_Dani shakes her head, pouts adorably, and Jamie can’t help herself. She turns her head presses another kiss to her cheek, buries her head in Dani’s shoulder._

_“Not even now?”_

_“Jamie,” nobody says her name like Dani does. Like she’s waltzing with it, like she_ _’s holding it carefully in her hands and tracing gentle patterns on it. Every time Dani says her name, Jamie_ _has to_ _fight the_ _impulse to tell her to keep it forever, because she knows it’ll be safe in her mouth._

_“It’s,” she starts, pauses for dramatic effect, “a song! Ta-da!”_

_When Dani seems unimpressed, she turns her around and kisses her nose. “Fine,” she says. “It’s Brahms_ _’_ _lullaby.”_

_“It sounds pretty.”_

_You sound pretty_ _, Jamie thinks._ _I could listen to you talk forever, just an endless stream of blabbering_ _. Dani’s voice is a symphony of its own,_ _the accidental kind where all the notes somehow come together on their own to form what might possibly be the best song she’s ever heard._

_I wish I could stay her_ _e_ _forever, she whispers into Dani’s ear, and the smile that’s bestowed upon her in return makes her ache_.) 

“Flora isn’t here,” Dani tells her, when there’s been quite enough of hands braced on shoulders and eyes drawn to each other’s. Jamie wants to disentangle herself from Dani with a grunt, because being this close to the girl she’s still stupidly gone for is pure agony, and yet, when Dani tells her this, she can see, very clearly, the acute worry in her eyes. 

(Oh, Jamie loves this girl so.) 

So, she relaxes, raises her own arms to rest on Dani’s shoulders. “Hey, Poppins?” she says. “She’s probably back at the house, okay? Nothing to worry about. She’s alright. Nothing to worry about.” 

Dani nods, shakily. 

***** 

Owen spends most of their expedition giving Rebecca the rundown on what’s happened between Jamie and Dani. There are shouts of “Flora!” interspersed with stories of how they met, and the unfortunate day they parted. 

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Rebecca calls from a distance away; they’re spilt up in the woods, hacking away at the branches. “They were together for a couple of months before Dani abruptly broke up with Jamie and then quit her job and everything? That’s—” 

“I know,” he replies. If there are two sides to a breakup, he only knows Jamie’s. Only knows the night she got so drunk he found her collapsed on the ground near that precious moonflower plant of hers. Only knows the days she would walk around, gardening with a ferocity that was fearsome to watch. Jamie poured all her love into her plants, but she also poured her pain and her agony in them, and Owen is convinced that is why they are the way they are, exquisite and indestructible, vulnerable yet intent on surviving whatever life threw at them. Jamie’s plants are an extension of Jamie, of all the hard and soft edges that had made her. 

“I don’t think she’s here.” 

The worry has almost reached a fever pitch in her eyes, so he puts down the axe, runs over to where she’s standing. “Hey. Rebecca. Hey. She’s probably just in the house, okay?” 

“You really think so?” she asks, sniffling. 

“Yes!” 

It takes her a moment. “Okay,” she says, fingers at the bridge of her nose. “Okay, got it. She’s fine.” 

“She is.” 

They’re almost to the lake when she speaks again. “You’d be a good dad, you know?” 

And then immediately feels embarrassed. Whether or not Owen and Hanna, two lovely people, who were, up till seven months ago, complete strangers to her, have kids is so totally none of her business. Thankfully, Owen laughs. 

“Ah, we’ve still got a-ways to go before we get there. I wanna open a restaurant in Paris, bake some cakes, regular vagaries of youth, you know?” 

“You guys are moving to Paris?” Rebecca asks. 

And well. Paris. A complicated topic that brings up memories of whispered fights in the kitchen, slammed doors and nights spent on couches. 

“It’s — not really?” he tells her. “Um, I don’t know. Hannah doesn’t really seem to want to leave this place. It is her home, after all.” 

_But I do_ , he thinks. There’s a part of him that’s wanted to escape since he was a boy, has wanted to see the world with the woman he loves at his side. 

But Hannah cannot live apart from Bly Manor, and he cannot live apart from her. 

And he will not live apart from her. 

Rebecca doesn’t say anything, just listens, and for that, he is grateful. It inspires him to dig around in his pocket, trying to find something he’s been carrying around for a long time now. 

“Hey,” he asks her, “Wanna see something?” 

She gasps when she sees the ring. It is pretty impressive. A band of pure gold with a huge elaborately carved stone in the middle. His mother had left it to him a year before she died, pressing it into his hand with a whisper of “You keep it, I don’t need it anymore”. He’s just been carrying it around in his pocket, looking for an occasion to do it. 

“When are you planning on doing it?” she asks him, excited. 

He shrugs. 

“What — looking for the right time?” 

“Something like that.” 

***** 

( _“Babe.”_

_“Baby.”_

_“Darling.”_

_“Sweetheart.”_

_Jamie looks at her drunk, grumpy girlfriend_ _who’s in the process of dancing her way across the street. “I don’t care how many terms of endearment you call_ _me,_ _it’s still not working.”_

_“But baby,” Dani whines, the last syllable stretched to epic proportions_ _, so long that Jamie swears she can still hear it swinging in the air between them_ _._

_“I’m not marrying you, you idiot,” she laughs. “We’ve been dating, what, three months?”_

_“But — but, but — I’ll ask you nicely.”_

_“Ask nicely and we’ll see,” she says, because she is honestly tempted. The sober Dani of tomorrow is going to be very fucking embarrassed tomorrow but fuck it. She’s_ _gonna_ _get her kicks_ _whenever she can._

_“Okay, okay, okay,” she says, face scrunched_ _up in the cutest frown Jamie has ever seen. Dani, still holding onto her hand, slowly gets down on one knee, and looks up at her. “_ _Jamie. My darling. My beautiful, beautiful sweetheart. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”_

_Yes_ _, she thinks. “Nicer.”_

_“I have a good job,” Dani continues. “I can take you on a honeymoon to America. Have you ever seen America?_ _I’m going there next week._ _It’s not half bad.”_

_Yes, my love_ _, she thinks again. “Nicer.”_

_“I love you,” Dani tries and this time it makes Jamie’s knees buckle. She carefully kneels in front of Dani so they’re level_ _._

_“Will you remember this tomorrow?” she asks, gently, kissing her forehead._

_“I don’t know.”_

_I love_ _you_ _,_ _she thinks._ _Dani, I love you so, so much_ _. “Ask me in a year, then.”_

_“I will. I promise.”_ ) 

***** 

“I didn’t mean it, you know?” Miles says, abruptly, when they’re in the basement, and Hannah turns to see him looking away, jaw set stubbornly. “What I said to Flora.” 

Her heart reaches out to him, looking so forlorn against the tiny light coming from the bulb, his features even more defined in the stark light. The soft curves of a boy, the hard edges of a man in the making. 

“I know that, poppet,” she says, hand on his shoulder. “I know you love her.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.” 

She pinches at his ear gently, while he fiddles with his hands. They are growing up too fast. It seems only like a couple of years ago when she’d first found a home here, that she’d been chasing toddlers around the grounds. When she’d met Owen, and discovered, with the kind of wonder that could only accompany the second time you gave away your heart to someone, that home could be more than a place, or a moment in time. 

“Hey Hannah?” 

“Yes, Miles?” 

“Are you going to marry Owen?” 

She laughs. “I mean, the man needs to ask me first.” 

It’s only half-true. Last year, she’d gone to the finest jeweler in Bly and asked him to have a ring made. It was the biggest purchase she’d ever made. Worth every penny. 

“But you will?” he asks, his hands busy flashing the torch in different directions. “Marry him if he asked?” 

_But will he?_ she wonders, and hates the tiny voice inside her head that asks the silly, insecure question. Here’s the thing about being a single, divorced woman whose husband left for another woman: you know that there’s never a guarantee about someone sticking around. The ugly, twisted part of her that makes her unbearably sad at times keeps telling her that there’s a good chance Owen, too, will get tired of her eventually. 

It’s why the ring lies in the folds of her skirt, never to be taken out, why the idea of living at Bly Manor forever seems so damn comforting. There are things that leave you, and then there are the things that you leave behind. It’s easier on the heart when it’s the one making the choice, instead of the other way round. 

“Of course I would.” 

“Huh,” Miles hums in response, and she knows what he’s really asking. 

“It’s like you know how your bedroom is the most comforting place on the planet for you? How there are some rooms you just walk in and feel right — like you could just sink in and rest? That’s what Owen makes me feel like. Like Rebecca feels most at ease when she’s drawing up papers for your uncle, or when Flora — oh. Oh dear.” 

“We’re right idiots,” Miles says, already bounding up the stairs and she’s inclined to agree. 

***** 

So, they’re fighting. 

And really, Dani would love to think that she’s being the bigger person, that she had, in fact set out on this expedition determined to not lose her cool because, one, she had absolutely no right to lose her cool and two, she did deserve whatever Jamie was throwing at her, but in all honesty, there’s only a limit to what one can take, especially when they’re already worried about a missing child. 

“I cannot believing you’re screaming at me! Me! You — you broke up with me? I don’t even—” 

“Like it was my fault that we accidentally stumbled upon the café we had our first date in and I kept dawdling because I wanted to remember the good times—” 

“—oh, I’m sorry, what good times are—” 

“—you know what, Jamie, that’s really fucking unfair—” 

“Unfair? I wasn’t the one dumped by a coward who never even cared about—” 

That does it. There’s an angry roaring in her chest, the weight of all the words that had fermented unsaid twisting in her throat and then suddenly they all come pouring out in this babbling mess of a monologue that, five minutes later, she wouldn’t really be proud of. She’s a shaking, shivering mess with her hands moving rapidly in the air and she. Cannot. Stop. 

“Oh fuck you, Jamie, I fucking loved you! I loved you so fucking much. I — I fucking love you so fucking much that I stayed away for seven months, in pure agony, only so you’d have a better life without me and my issues saddling you down, and you have the gall — okay, alright, you know what? You wanna pretend all those nights I stayed up until morning just so we could talk, all the dates we went on, all the times I told you, and showed you, exactly how much I cared never happened? Go ahead and do that. But you very well know that that’s not true and you’re just telling yourself that to make yourself feel better.” 

“Dani....” 

“Oh, no!” she continues, taking a huge deep breath. “And calling me a coward? Real gold coming from the woman who couldn’t even admit to herself that she was in love with me.” 

“Dani—” 

“Yeah,” she finishes. “I do remember the night I got drunk. I—” 

“Dani, shut up!” 

“Did you just—” 

“Shush!” Jamie says again, and that’s when Dani looks, really looks. Turns out in the entire time it had taken her to deliver her monologue, her purse, that had been in her hand and somehow opened and spilled some of its contents onto the ground. Jamie knelt on the ground, next to a credit card, a half-used tube of lip gloss, and what looked suspiciously like— 

“Oh, fuck.” 

“Why,” Jamie asks, holding it up to her. “Do you have this lying around?” 

And then her phone rings. 

( _“Jamie, I swear to God—”_

_“What?” Jamie asks her, tongue still licking the last of the cream from the waffle. “What did I do?”_

_“What did I do, she asks,” Dani mutters,_ _and knows Jamie can hear her._

_“Will teasing you with my sexy way of eating ever get old?_ _Hmm, oh dear, oh golly gosh._ _”_ _H_ _er girlfriend is still licking at the stupid thing and Dani wants to murder her. Right after she grabs her by the_ _collar of that black shirt she’s wearing and kisses her like, forever._

_“You’re the worst,” she groans, head sinking onto the table slowly. It could work, if she refused to watch._

_It’s because she isn’t looking that Jamie’s finger poking at her shoulder after two minutes surprises her._

_“I’m not looking up.”_

_“But darling—”_

_“Nope.”_

_“Okay, fine, then look at this,” Jamie pushes one of the used tissue papers from before, folded into a tiny hea_ _rt, in her direction. It unfolds into the lipstick imprint of Jamie’s lips, and Dani has never been more in love with anyone in her whole, entire, life._

_“You’re an idiot,” she says, when she can speak._

_“_ _Okay, yes, but Poppins,_ _I’m your idiot_.”) 

***** 

He finds Hannah in the kitchen just as she’s hung up the phone. Sneaks up behind her, and gets to experience what is probably up there on Owen Sharma’s list of best things in the world: the feeling of Hannah Grose relaxing in his arms. 

“Did it sound like it worked?” 

She turns around, slides her arms behind his neck. “You know, love, I can never tell with those two idiots.” 

He starts swaying, gently, guiding them around the kitchen table. “Flora alright?” 

“Children,” she shakes her head. “Went up to her mother’s room and fell asleep behind the huge chest.” 

He kisses Hannah’s forehead, turns her around underneath his arm, and pulls her closer. Another thing to add to his list: dancing with Hannah in his arms. 

“You know, I can see us doing this.” 

“You can?” 

“Yes. Dancing in the kitchen at Bly Manor forever and ever and ever.” 

She fumbles, then stops moving. Takes a deep breath, looks him in the eye. “Or — or Paris. We can also do this in Paris.” 

He doesn’t react, not immediately. Part of him is unsure of what to say, of what to think, and he doesn’t want to scare her by assuming things. 

“Paris, huh?” 

“Yes,” she nods. “I just — Miles was asking me about — well, he was asking me about something, and I just — you’re who I want, okay? In Bly Manor, or in America, or in stupid Paris. I don’t care. As long as you’re there, that’s where I want to be as well.” 

“Was Miles, by any chance, asking you about your future marriage plans?” 

She frowns. “How did you know that?” 

“I might have, maybe, kind of—” 

“Owen Sharma!” 

“What?” he says, hand going to his pocket. Fuck waiting for the right time. He pulls out the box, prepares to go down on one knee and then— 

“Ouch!” 

“No!” 

“Did you just stamp on my foot?” 

“Yes, I did,” the idiot woman says, and to be utter surprise, kneels in front of him, with her hand holding a tiny sparking something in it. “You’re not allowed to propose to me because I want to do it.” 

“Hannah, my love, the bane of my existence—” 

“Owen Sharma,” she cuts over him, and he doesn’t even care, because her smile is so wide and her eyes are brighter than all the stars in the country sky. “I love you. Would you do me the honor of being my husband?” 

Well. They did say _Yes_ was the most beautiful word in the English language. 

***** 

_(_ _When you lose a relationship, you go through the five stages of grief. Or at least, that’s what Jamie’s method is. She denies, and she gets_ _angry, and then she bargains, followed by sinking into the vilest of depressive phases, before she can finally look herself in the mirror and accept that you now h_ _ave to create a life outside of someone who used to take up a lot of yours previously. It works for every other woman she has loved and lost._

_It d_ _idn’t_ _work for Dani._

_Because, well, you see, there’s a breakup and there’s losing the love of your life._

_Dani didn’t walk into her life. She didn’t come in and carve out a space for herself._ _She didn’t need to._ _She fit, seamlessly. By the time Jamie opened the door, Dani was alre_ _ady on the other end, making Jamie’s songs, her stories, her life her own._ _All of Jamie was already hers, by the time they found each other in the kitchen, behind the statue, in the woods. All of Jamie’s places, it seemed, already carried the_ _imprints of Dani’s footsteps._

_Still, it took her about a month after the breakup to press a fist to her chest, and feel the hollow space there, the utter lack of Dani’s name being repeated every second._

_How was anyone supposed to fall out of love with their whole heart?_ ) 

She stops the car halfway on their way to Bly Manor, with a jerk that seems to wake Dani from where she’d been leaning on the passenger-side window, face resolutely turned away. It’s when she calls her name, a whispered “Dani?” that Dani’s hand moves to her face and rubs at it, and like an idiot, that’s when she realizes that she’s been crying. 

“Okay, get out,” she says, because her reflex right now is to climb over and wrap her arms around the woman and they cannot be doing that. 

“I’m sorry?” Dani sniffles out, voice doing a terrible rendition of someone who isn’t supposedly crying her eyes out. 

“We clearly need to talk about this, and, well,” she turns, unlocks the side of her car, and stops a microsecond before the gasp hits her. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she turns back to Dani again, taking in the sight of her ex-girlfriend trembling in her seat, eyes wide, hand already on Jamie’s. “I forgot.” 

Dani tries to nod. Fails. 

“Hey,” Jamie grabs the wrist that currently has a death grip just above her elbow. “I wouldn’t have. I promise.” 

“Okay....okay, yeah.” 

They end up standing on the side of the road, having stepped out with Dani making sure no other vehicle was on its way in their direction. There aren’t a lot of cars passing through, just the woods stretching on for miles and miles, and Dani looks impossibly fragile with the wind whipping her hair around her face. 

(Jamie wants to walk forward and hold her, wants to kiss her, wants to erase every bit of the history between them so they can start over. Jamie wants and wants and wants. She waits, instead.) 

“You never answered my question from earlier.” 

“You already know the answer to that.” 

Jamie’s shaking her head before Dani even finishes. “Nope,” she says. “You have to tell me.” 

She sees Dani open her mouth. Close it again. Raise her hands a fraction, and then sink into it like she’s utterly, immeasurably, exhausted, and Jamie can see it on her face, on every last frown and crease. 

“I love you, Jamie,” she says, and Jamie stops breathing. There is not greater sound than this, no better combination of words to make their way into her chest and squeeze. “I’ve always loved you, Jamie.” 

“But you — you left.” 

A tear spills out when Dani shakes her head. “I didn’t — I didn’t want to, baby, I — oh, fuck.” 

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Take your time.” 

“I started seeing him again.” 

Jamie knows who she’s talking about before she remembers his name. 

“Remember right before we broke up when I went off to America? Yeah, I had no idea my mother was going to take me to some wake they had for him and I—” she’s breathing heavy again, “seeing his mother and his family and talking about all of it just — I started seeing him all the time. Not just in the mirrors. Everywhere. Everywhere. How was I supposed to come back to you after that, broken?” 

“—you were never—” 

“—except I felt like I was, Jamie. Like I was only part of me, and that remaining part of me was the most miserable shell of my former self.” 

“I loved you, Dani.” It’s the first time she’s ever said it to Dani. It’s the first time she’s ever meant it. 

Dani sobs. “I know,” she says, voice shaking. “Which is why I couldn’t let you do that, without me being, better or whatever.” 

“And are you? Better?” 

Dani shrugs. “I think so? There’s this doctor I’ve been seeing. She helps.” 

Jamie takes a deep breath, steps back, turns to her right and walks a couple steps so she can get her bearings. Wants to scream, but she’s worried it would scare Dani. 

“All this goddamn pain,” Jamie whispers after she walks back. “I just — I hacked that stupid moonflower and then grew a new one because I was hoping I’d get to give you one again.” 

Dani rubs at her eyes. “I still sleep with the phone in my hand in case you ever.... called.” 

“I’m still growing marigolds because you like those ugly flowers.” 

“I’m still — I’m still stupidly in love with you.” 

(Jamie’s so tired. She’s so, so tired.) 

Jamie takes a tiny step forward. “Where does that leave us?” 

Dani moves, too, her hands hovering like she wants them on Jamie, and Jamie can see the exact minute she gets that glint of steel in her eyes, when she raises them and keeps them on Jamie’s shoulders. 

“You tell me.” 

It feels like the world’s ending. Feels like it’s starting all over again. “I feel like it’s stupid of us to stay apart knowing that we’re still disgustingly in love with each other?” 

Dani takes a deep breath. “Baby steps work,” she says, and steps forward to kiss Jamie. 

Jamie thinks there are fireworks. Turns out that’s just the sound of her heart walking back into her chest and re-slotting into place. 

***** 

On a Saturday afternoon like any other, Dani Clyton walks into the kitchen at Bly Manor, hand in hand with the gardener, and immediately picks a giggling Flora up in her arms only to pin her with the most deadly look an au pair can give a child of ten. 

Flora giggles. 

“If you ever fall asleep in strange places again....” 

Flora hugs her tightly, and Dani feels any minute amount anger she might have had, dissipate. “I missed you, Dani.” 

“I missed you too, you little nuisance.” 

Lord Wingrave is dictating something to Rebecca over a glass of wine. Miles is snoozing with his head on Hannah’s shoulder, who is— 

“Oh, my, God,” Jamie says from behind her. “Is that a ring I see?” 

Owen raises her hand like an obliging future bridegroom, and even Lord Wingrave raises his head to shoot a tiny smile in their direction. 

“Happy endings all around, I see,” Dani says. 

“Really?” Owen asks, eyebrow raised. “Is it a happy ending all around?” 

Dani hesitates, for a moment before she feels Jamie’s arm wrap around her waist. Then she nods. 

(It isn’t, in fact, a Saturday afternoon like any other.) 

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna generally scream over random fandoms or send prompts on tumblr, hit me up [here](https://thedistrictsleepsalonetonight.tumblr.com/)


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